And the losses begin again

I’ve just learned of the death of Mary Tyler Moore, at the age of eighty. She’s not the first famous person to die in 2017, but she’s the first to really mean something to me, and to be remembered.

I watched her in The Dick van Dyke Show, I watched her in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (fancying her something rotten!). I watched Rhoda and especially Lou Grant, neither of which would have existed without The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I watched seven series of Hill Street Blues, one of the most influential shows of the last forty years, changing the face of American TV drama, by creating the ensemble series, and that wouldn’t have existed without the production company, MtM, and whose initials were those?

But she was sweet, bright, lively and engaging. If you were a bloke, you watched her because she looked incredibly good, but you watched her because she made watching TV good. She was talented, intelligent, and very very likeable. The time you spent around her felt good.

It doesn’t matter that this was all so long ago. Memories don’t die, only people. This world is no longer better for her being among us. She was just a bloody lovely lady, all the way through.